The invention relates to an apparatus and a method for separating a feed fluid, particularly a suspension into a less concentrated or even pure phase (filtrate fluid) and a more concentrated phase (concentrate fluid).
In areas such as biotechnology, waste water treatment, pharmacy, medicine and the beverage industry, it is a frequent problem to separate solid particles from a feed fluid, such as enzymes or yeast in an aqueous solution, blood in plasma, or pulp from juice, etc.
Previously known dynamic filter separators work with a two chamber system. The feed fluid is impelled in a first chamber, called a concentrate chamber, which is separated from a second chamber, the filtrate chamber, by a partially permeable wall, e.g., a porous membrane or a semipermeable membrane. In the second chamber, the filtrate is collected from the whole plane of the membrane.
The concentrate chamber is connected to a feed fluid inlet and a concentrate fluid outlet, and the filtrate chamber is connected to a filtrate fluid outlet.
Such a filter is called dynamic when a relative motion of the suspension in the concentrate chamber along the membrane is induced by any means, such as a rotatable disk. Thus, clogging of the membrane pores is avoided or at least diminished.
In this state of the art the effect of different degrees of separation of the suspension at different locations at the membrane had not been taken into account. Any inhomogeneous behavior of the separation process due to, e.g., parameters of the feed fluid such as pressure, temperature, concentration or velocity in the concentrate chamber has not been considered.